How to do research and write about it.

As we are already in the third term and the time to write the analysis for our Master’s project approaches steadily, I thought it might be a good idea to share some resources about (economic) academic writing I came across over the last years.

John Cochrane of U Chicago, known for his contributions to financial macroeconomics and his blog The Grumpy Economist, provides us with a concise yet comprehensive guide on how to write a paper:

The most comprehensive guide on how to write economics I have come across during my undergraduate is by Robert Neugeboren and Mireille Jabocson of Harvard University. The guide outlines the economic approach, writing economically, the language of economic analysis, finding and researching your topic, as well as formatting and documentation.

Matthew Gentzkow (Stanford) and Jesse M. Shapiro (Brown) wrote a fantastic practitioner’s guide on how you should structure your code, why you should automate almost everything, and how important version control is. More general, the handbook is about translating insights from experts in code and data into practical terms for empirical social scientists. It’s a must-read for everyone working empirically.

A great resource on how to communicate your research using data visualization is given by Jonathan A. Schwabish of The Urban Institute. Schwabish is considered a leader in the data visualization field and is a leading voice for clarity and accessibility in research.